Metallica Bassist Details Band’s Current Writing Sessions
Metallica have officially begun the early stages of writing for their next album, the follow-up to Hardwired… To Self-Destruct.
Drummer Lars Ulrich first indicated they were looking at working on new material in a live chat in late April, talking about the weekly Zoom calls between band members and saying there was “a very good chance” they’d work on new music if the quarantine continues for “six months or a year.” Then in mid-June he confirmed the band had already begun swapping ideas back and forth over the internet.
Now, in a new chat with Vinyl Guide, bassist Robert Trujillo provided some more info on how the band’s virtual writing sessions are proceeding, trumping up swapping files and ideas over the internet as this grand experiment no one has done before. Which, obviously, is poppycock: tons of bands of significant import have been doing this for at least the past 15 years, even if Metallica haven’t been.
Here’s the quote:
“We communicate every week, which is really great, so we have our connection intact. And what we’ve started doing is basically just really concentrating on our home studios and being creative from our homes and navigating through ideas and building on new ideas. And that’s where we’re at right now. We’re excited about cultivating new ideas, to be honest. And everybody’s in a good headspace, for the most part, and that’s pretty much our focus now. ‘Let’s have fun with this.’ That’s part of the reason I got some updated recording-gear and I’m putting ideas together and we’re checking each other’s vibes out on new stuff. And that’s pretty much where we’re at; we haven’t talked about touring lately.
“I’ll tell you, we just did nearly three years on the ‘Hardwired’ album and, of course, Australia [where the interviewer is from] is one of my favorite places on the planet to go play, and South America as well, so we will get back down there. I’m not too worried about that; I know we will. Obviously, we’ve gotta get through this quarantine and all this stuff that’s happening with that.
“In the meantime, we’re creating, and I think that is really cool ’cause sometimes it takes a while to get the band together and get four individuals who are living in different places in the same room. But it’s like, ‘Hey, guess what? We don’t have to be in the same room right now.’ We can make music from our homes and work together and build stuff, and then we’ll get in that room together and we’ll bang the stuff out, but we’ll be 40 steps ahead.
“There’s no definite plan as to a release date; I mean, we’re just sort of now cultivating the terrain and getting kind of excited about it, to be honest. It’s kind of a cool thing that we’ve been able to start focusing on that ’cause it’s new for us, we haven’t done it this way. I don’t think many people have done it this way. Everybody’s gotta kind-of restructure their routines and their creative flow. And at some point, all this will transition into what it’s gonna transition into and we’ll have live shows again. And I’m sure there’s gonna be a lot of new music coming ’cause most musicians are writing new stuff right now, and that’s exciting to me.”
He’s right about that last part — this is certainly a very creative time for many — but c’mon, Rob, Metallica are hardly pioneers when it comes to writing music without all being in the same room together!
Either way, needless to say, this should be exciting news for Metallica fans, and could mean we hear new music from the band some time in 2021.
[via Ultimate Guitar]
